Is it a win for women? Or a massive dose of virtue signalling?  

Jerry Brown has run California for years now, since 2011. He's old, and is on his way out, given they have term limits.  

But as he prepares to leave, he's leaving his mark. California will require public companies to have women on boards.  

They will be fined if they don’t, they will be fined if they don’t report how many women they have got. By the end of next year they have to have one woman, by the end of 2021 there need to be three.  

They are also, under law, being forced to provide sexual harassment training, and there is a ban on secret deals struck around any such matters.  

Will these laws make for better businesses? Will they be more productive? More profitable? Does a business become more successful by mandates from the government?

I think we all know the answer to that.

And I am surprised that women want something like this. How does a woman feel, how does anyone feel, when they are selected for anything other than their ability?  

If an employer can't advertise based on sex, how does that law get circumvented when a board vacancy comes up, and they go looking for a woman, and a woman alone? Does the aggrieved bloke still have a case to take? Or does the law not apply now?  

And, importantly, what about the woman who gets the job? Does she feel she is there because she was the best person for the job? Or was she just the best woman for the job, given women were the only ones being looked at? 

And when she enters that boardroom, we all know why she is there.  

Now she might, they will argue, turn out to be the revelation. But here's the critical point, if she is, wouldn't she have been that way if she'd won the job on her own merits against a proper field and a proper selection process?

These sort of moves, as altruistic as those who promote them might think they're being, merely raise resentment. They favour one over the other, based on artificiality.

It’s a false premise, it’s a stacked deck. In the world of work, especially at the top of the pile like boards where serious life changing decisions, multi-million dollar decisions are made, the key to the job is skill, experience and talent.  

No, there isn't equal representation of women on boards. But unless that’s a result of pure sexism, which it isn't,then you can't rectify it with invented quotas.  

This is where politicians caught up in the wave of PC, me too, kumbaya, that we are currently swamped by, are so dangerous.